This photo is the document most requested from the National Archives, topping requests for copies of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And rightly so, of course.
Following up on my earlier post that featured this photo, reader John Shelton Lawrence has kindly forwarded this link to the correspondence between The King and All the President’s Men, from both before the historic December 21, 1970 meeting and after Elvis had left the building. Included are Elvis’s handwritten note requesting a get-together, several internal White House memos, and numerous photos memorializing the occasion..
Teaser: In a memo to the guardian of Nixon’s door, H.R. Haldeman, recommending that Presley’s request for a meeting be granted, White House aide Dwight Chapin writes:
bq. …if the President wants to meet with some bright young people outside the government, Presley might be a perfect one to start with.
Haldeman’s scrawled response:
bq. You must be kidding.
And here, for your reading pleasure, is White House aide Egil “Bud” Krogh’s hilarious first-hand account of the meeting. You just couldn’t make this stuff up.
And now you know … the rest of the story.